CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

August 4, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

Ubuntu 16.04.1 ISO Images Released for Intel Atom Bay Trail & Cherry Trail Compute Sticks

Canonical has recently released Ubuntu 16.04.1, which is now considered stable enough to update from Ubuntu 14.04.04 LTS, and while I could do that easily on my main machine using update-manager, upgrading to Ubuntu 16.04 on Intel Atom “Bay Trail” and “Cherry Trail” devices is a bit more complicated if you need audio & wireless networking (WiFi/Bluetooth) support since the kernel needs to be patched, and on top of that recent Linux kernels are not stable on such platforms without some extra hacks. Linuxium has done all the hard work, and created Ubuntu 16.04.1 ISO images for Intel Atom Compute Sticks with working audio, WiFi, Bluetooth, and “C-state” patchsets to avoid freezes. The images may also work on other devices, but this has not been tested so far. If you want to give it a try, you can download ubuntu-16.04.1-desktop-linuxium-ics.iso, and flash it to a USB drive with Rufus (Windows) […]

August 3, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

SolidRun ClearFog Base is a $90 Router/Networking Board with USB 3.0, M.2, mSATA, and Gigabit Ethernet Support

SolidRun introduced ClearFog Pro and Base board based on Marvell Armada 380/388 processor at the end of last year, but at the time, only the higher-end ClearFog Pro board was available for $170 and up. Now the company has officially launched the cheaper ClearFog Base board based on the same processor, two Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 ports, one SFP cage, a USB 3.0 port, an M.2 slot, mPCIe expansion slot, and more. ClearFog Base board specifications: Processor – Marvell ARMADA 388 (88F6828) dual core ARMv7 processor (Cortex A9 class) @ up to 1.6 GHz with 1MB L2 cache, NEON and FPU System Memory – 1GB RAM by default (2GB optional) Storage – 1x micro SD slot, optional 4GB eMMC flash, 1x M.2 slot, 1x mSATA/mPCIE Connectivity – 2x dedicated Gigabit Ethernet ports, 1x SFP cage USB – 1x USB 3.0 port Expansions 1x mini PCI Express slots (shared with mSATA ) 1x […]

ArmSoM CM5 - Raspberry Pi CM4 alternative with Rockchip RK3576 SoC

August 3, 2016January 17, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments

What’s the Cheapest MCU? My Try: Holtek HT48R002 8-bit MCU Selling for $0.085

Somebody asked what was the cheapest MCU (Microcontroller) available on Google+, so I thought it would be fun to find the cheapest one regardless of specifications. It turns out there an older thread with this very question on StackExchange, and at the time (2011) Microchip PIC10F200 8-bit MCU with 256B RAM in SOP-23 package was the cheapest one among the answer, and somehow the price has not changed as it’s still $0.32 per unit for 1k orders. Not a bad price, but back in the days when I wrote on CD and DVD players, we had some price pressure from customers, so we looked for a cheaper microcontroller, and ended up using Holtek because of the competitive pricing. We suffered a bit during development due to incomplete documentation but eventually did the job. Anyway, I went to the Holtek website and found a “cost-effective I/O MCU” category, and HT48R002 appears […]

August 3, 2016August 3, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Ipega PG-9057 is a Bluetooth Gaming Gun for Android & iOS Smartphones, TV Boxes, Computers, etc…

I first came across Ipega brand when I reviewed E-Box T8-4 TV box which included Ipega PG-9028 Bluetooth game controller, which also serves as an handle for your smartphone, so that you can easily play game on your Android smartphone while holding the gamepad. That kind of controller is now pretty common, but Ipega 9057 might be a little less common as instead of a gamepad, a gun carries your smartphone instead making it suitable for first person games such as Dead Trigger, Shadowgun, or Modern Combat. PG-9057 gun specifications: Connectivity – Bluetooth 3.0; 8 meters range Stand – 45 to 95mm for smartphones with up to 6″ displays USB – 1x micro USB for charging Controls – Various buttons and joysticks (See graph below) Misc – LED for battery level, vibration motor, reset pinhole Battery – Built-in Lithium 600mAh; up to 25 hours play time; up to 2 hours […]

August 3, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Embedded Android (Marshmallow) and Brillo / Weave Internals Presentation Slides

Karim Yaghmour – founder of Opersys, a company specializing in Embedded Linux and Android training and development – is currently at Android Devcon 2016 were he gave a full day Embedded Android Workshop on August 1st, as well as a separate 1+ hour talk about Brillo/Weave internals on August 2, and more talks scheduled on the next two days about Android memory management, debugging and development, and Project Ara. He has just released the presentation slides on Slideshare, with the first “Embedded Android Workshop with Marshmallow” presentation totaling 175 pages, and dealing with Linux and Android concepts, overall architecture, system startup, the Linux kernel, hardware support, native user-space, Java for Android, JMI, AOSP, and more… The second presentation is much shorter with 29 slides, and deals specifically with Brillo / Weave internals including Embedded Linux, Android, Binder, DBUS, HAL, the source tree architecture, and so on. While you’d probably learn […]

August 2, 2016August 11, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 23 Comments

How to Set an Android TV Box Video Output to Portrait Mode

Most buyers who buy an Android TV box just want to use it to watch videos, browse the web, play games, and so on, so landscape mode seems to be the best choice, and the orientation option in the firmware is often disabled. However, TV boxes can also potentially be used as digital signage players, which may require landscape or portrait modes if the screen is positioned vertically. Since I’ve just been asked that question, I’ve checked for a solution, and luckily there’s an app called Set Orientation that does the job. [Update August 2021: The app has been removed from the Google Play store, it might be worth trying Screen Rotation Control app instead] When you first start the app, it will show the option “Disabled”, but you can click on the arrow to reveal more options, and select Portrait to rotate the screen. In case the screen is […]

Rockchip RK3568/RK3588 and Intel x86 SBCs

August 2, 2016August 2, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

The Internet of Bridges? Connected and Solar Powered Systems for Rainfall and Stream Water Level Monitoring

We often drive on a bridge fitted with some solar powered equipment, and recently they added a solar powered camera pointing towards the river, so I became curious and decided it would be fun to have a look, and find out what it was all about. There are now 3 solar powered and connected systems. The first system has a larger solar panel connected to a Bosch camera, and a white box… The sticker on the box gives away the purpose of the system: “National Disaster Warning Center” If we look the other side of the system we’ll see an antenna (for 3G/LTE?) as well as a light pointing down to a scale to measure the water level… Probably not the most cost effective way of checking out the level, but it works, and they should have a live feed in case something goes very wrong, and it might be […]

August 2, 2016August 2, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Samsung JerryScript is a Lightweight Open Source JavaScript Engine for the Internet of Things

In the old days, micro-controller programming was all done in assembly or C, but in recent years higher level languages, included interpreted ones such as Python and JavaScript, have made their ways into MCUs with projects such as MicroPython or Espruino (JS) often running on STMicro STM32 ARM Cortex M micro-controllers, but also other platforms such as ESP8266. As I browsed through the Embedded Linux Conference Europe 2016 schedule, I discovered that Samsung worked on it own implementation of a JavaScript engine for the Internet of Things: JerryScript. It is a full implementation of ECMAScript 5.1 standard written in C that can run on micro-controllers with less than 64KB RAM, and less than 200KB storage (160KB footprint with ARM Thumb-2 compilation). JerryScript is comprised of two main components: Parser and Virtual Machine (VM), with the parser performing translation of input ECMAScript application into byte-code than is then executed by the Virtual […]